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  • America as Donald Trump (II), By Patience Turtoe-Sanders

    America as Donald Trump (II), By Patience Turtoe-Sanders

    By Dr. Patience Turtoe-Sanders

    Continue first part here

    President Trump is a very smart man, yet he is not being given credit for his smartness. American bourgeoisies say, “He is not presidential.” But the bourgeoisies forgot that the founding fathers of America were not presidential. History reveals that some of the founding fathers of this great country call America, were hooligans, that the prison gates of England were let loose to release the hoodlums of England to set sail to America, and sail they set. The early settlers of America were fearless and bold, ruthless and daring men who fought the waves of the high seas, suffered diseases, conquered, and came to America, and still they fought harsh and brutal weathers, fought and killed wild beasts, again survived, and fought relentlessly with their colonial masters, the British, to gain independence. The early settlers of America were not presidential, neither were they class conscious. All they wanted was a country where people could be FREE to express their thoughts, where the ambitious would dare to carry out their imagination, a country where anyone with a skill could achieve greatness. But present day Americans dislike immigrants: they have forgotten that their founding fathers and mothers were immigrants. Many Americans get intimidated when an immigrant exhales. Unless being entertained, an immigrant who shows academic excellence most times gets ignored, if not, he or she gets harshly criticized. Corporate America would prefer not to give a qualified immigrant a job because of their accents, and because corporate America do not want to “offend.” Many ordinary Americans would not patronize certain places because, “It is full of immigrants.” Some Americans have become so self-conscious that many have lost compassion, moral character and decorum, and like the bourgeoisies, these have joined in calling their own elect, a man who represent their own country, all sorts of names saying, “Donald trump is not presidential?”

    If being presidential is deceiving people, lying, cheating, conniving, saying one thing to the public and doing another, then President Trump is truly not presidential. But if expressing one’s thought, showing sympathy as President Trump did by pardoning a sick, repented, and dying 85-year-old man, and expressing humility as President Trump demonstrated by bending down to pick a flying hat from a guard’s head at an airport, and putting the hat back on the “common” guard’s head is not being presidential, then all those who accuse President Trump of such should have a change of heart and learn from the President. 1 Corinthians 9:19 says, “Though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all.…” President Trump had recognized that his position was to serve, not to show off, he didn’t need to. He already made a name for himself. President Trump wanted to help the public. The bourgeoisies of America seek devices to distract the President and the public every day. If it is not Russia, (which by the way did not influence American public to vote for Trump,) the President is distracted by his extended family members as in writing a book about him, or, his pardon, or, by award he gives, and his responses to hurricanes, which is, by the way, God’s call to America to repent and return to God.

    President Donald Trump is disliked, criticized and hated. Why? Is it because he is a black man in a white body? The culture of white skinned America is to subtly make a person being hurt feel good about it, but the Africa-American culture is to tell the way it is straight up. This is President Donald Trump, an extrovert, who does not hesitate to tell you the way he feels; he is bold and fearless to take an action that may not be supported. President Trump has deviated from his culture, he is showing the world the real American’s heart, and the bourgeoisies of America feel very uncomfortable with his behavior, so they want to stop him, but can the President be stopped? God Almighty, who sees the heart, searched the hearts of all who could turn gay-country America back to Him, and one who could make Jerusalem the Capital of Israel again. God found none other than President Trump, who was criticized for daring to voice a ban of transvestite from the military.

    The early founders of America founded America based on Christian principles, they prayed and sought God, as demonstrated in their coin, which reads, “In God we trust.” African-Americans also love God as demonstrated in the action of Floyd May Weather, when after whooping boxer, McGregor, looked up to the heavens in reverence of God. Yet, America became a gay country years before Donald Trump became President. Most Americans love God, but some have demonstrated a lack of respect for God and some Americans think they are themselves, gods. America is a gay country. But there is one who has shown a reverence for God, President Donald Trump. He recognizes that unborn babies are human beings, and that marriage is between a man and a woman as demonstrated in Genesis 2:24.

    The bourgeoisies of America and the President’s adversaries attempted to stop President Trump from achieving God’s plan for Americans, but they failed. They judged him, they went after his children, his son-in-law, and they even impeached him, but God was with President Trump. They criticized the President’s relationship with Russia, and some even accused Russia of putting President Trump in power. If previous regimes had done their homework, no country would have been able to hike into America’s computers to alter results of the 2016 election. I liken the matter of Russia’s interference to that of a student and a teacher, who left the answer sheet to an examination open and walked away from the test center. The student taking the test spied and copied, got one hundred percent, and then the teacher got angry that the student spied, yet the teacher was the one who exposed the answers.

    Oh, how God loved President Trump! How God demonstrated His powerful Hands on the President and his family members!! But no!!! President Trump has angered the Spirits. He has deviated from the original purpose that God has for him. President Trump is stopping himself from fulfilling the purpose of God for him and America. The President has demonstrated bad intentions for both immigrants and the American public. President Trump has refused to recognize that immigrants are the strength of America as demonstrated in farms and the medical field whose population have the highest workers of immigrants. The President’s administration has not protected immigrants. His administration appeared to totally dislike immigrants from Africa. The President even called an African nation “Shithole.” President Trump, himself, an employer till this day, has refused to acknowledge that corporate America and other money-hungry American employers have not only taken advantage of immigrants, that these sneak migrant workers through American borders into America every day, enslave these unsuspecting immigrants, and hold them hostage, and rather than protecting these immigrants, President Trump’s administration scattered immigrants and their children all over America. Through his insistence on building a wall, his handling of COVID 19, his insistence on scrapping “Obama Care,” through his unguarded pronouncements and contempt for other nations, and through the demonstration of his character that he prefers pleasing a certain group of American people to honoring God Almighty, Who crowned the President, who, in 2016, had not suspected that he, Donald Trump, would be elected President, President Trump has betrayed his own spiritual privilege. Billy Graham once said, “When wealth is lost, nothing is lost. When health is lost, something is lost. But when character is lost, everything is lost.” It grieves my heart that President Trump is going to lose the 2020 election. I truly love the President. I really do.

    Dr. Patience Turtoe-Sanders is an author, a preacher, a nurse, a professor, a mother and a wife. She lives in the United States of America.

  • America as Donald Trump (I), By Patience Turtoe-Sanders

    America as Donald Trump (I), By Patience Turtoe-Sanders

     

    By Dr. Patience Turtoe-Sanders

    Donald Trump was derided and laughed at when he announced his intention of running for the position of the presidency of the great United States of America in 2016. The bourgeoisies of America said, “He is kidding.” Many assumed Donald Trump, the entertainer, the one whose fame shot through the television program, “The Apprentice,” would quit. “He is going to quit in the middle of the race,” they said and waited, but Donald Trump beat seventeen candidates from his Republican party and won the nomination to run for the highest office in the world, with one goal in mind, which is, “To make America great again.” And to do this, Donald Trump would build a wall to keep foreigners from coming into the United States of America, and for this, the bourgeoisies got angry and accused Donald Trump of hate. The then President of America, Barack Obama, said, “America has too much sense to vote for Donald Trump,” but America did. Facts don’t lie. Deep investigations revealed that America overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump to be President of the United States of America. Why?

    This is because Americans love their country so much so, that many Americans have never traveled outside the states where they were born, nor have they read about other nations. Americans are so content with their country that most Americans never leave America. Some Americans rely on the media and personal contact to learn about other countries. Many base their judgment of immigrants (foreigners) on perception and not on facts, so that if their experience with an immigrant is negative, they will perceive all foreigners to be bad. Americans perceive immigrants as invaders. Why?

    Immigrants come to America with one goal in mind, which is, to create a better life for members of their community. America is individualized by culture. They are taught to first think of themselves before they think of other people. “YOU come first,” an American is told from cradle. But immigrants are communal by culture, so they think, act and perceive differently. Where Americans perceive discrimination, many immigrants perceive goals: “I came to this country to better the lives of my people,” and so most immigrants do not support a call against discrimination. Immigrants focus on their goals, and many work beneath their credentials. Immigrants do jobs that Americans would not do. Some immigrants who were medical doctors in their country, work as nursing assistants in America and then give an assessment of a patient better than the nurse they are assisting, to the annoyance of their bosses. Foreign Administrators, upon arrival in America may work as receptionist, professors as teachers’ aides, lawyers as messengers, yet they soon resume working in their rightful profession, and again to the annoyance of Americans who perhaps have been on the same blue-collar jobs for years. “How come you, who just came to America, have achieved so much?” Americans may ask of immigrants who were once their colleagues but have soared. Most Americans assume that their government provides financial aid for immigrant to excel, not knowing that the immigrant already had a profession before coming to America, and for exhaling, immigrants get disliked. Why?

    Many Americans are of the impression that immigrants do not pay taxes, and again, immigrants are disliked for this, yet Americans perception is wrong. Immigrants do pay taxes. Americans perceive immigrants as threat to their existence, so they want to keep immigrants away as demonstrated by President Trump, who at one time threatened to shut down the government if congress does not give him the opportunity to build a wall that will keep immigrants away, and for this some have called the President a bigot, a divider a hater, but building a wall was a major theme of the President’s campaign. President Trump did not hide his intention of keeping immigrants away from America, no. He was very clear about what he would do if voted into power, and the American people voted for him. So what’s the matter now? Why are the bourgeoisies of America criticizing President Trump? Why are they doing everything possible to discredit him? Why do they want his presidency terminated? Why do they hate the President so?

    The bourgeoisies of America hate President Donald Trump because he dared to reveal their hearts to the world. The bourgeoisies of American, regardless of party, whether Republicans or, Democrats think just like Donald Trump: they do not appreciate immigrants in America, but they keep their thoughts hidden, and President Trump has come to reveal their secrets thought to the world. In America, accent is bad. Once corporate America hears one’s accent, suddenly, the job the immigrant is interviewing for is no longer needed, or, the job description has changed, and, or, the pay has become smaller, or, the work load has increased. These pseudo job descriptions are given by corporate America in order to discourage the immigrants, yet, most immigrants will refuse to be discouraged and accept the job, again, to the annoyance of his or her American colleague, who screams, “You are being discriminated against. I don’t do that much, yet I get paid more.” Immigrants are focused. They come to America to achieve, and achieve they will. So many immigrants work hard.

    American employers seeing how hard immigrants work, soon device means of maximizing profit. A job that pays overtime after eight hours soon begins to pay overtime after forty hours, and while American workers protest, immigrants work happily, and again to the annoyance of Americans, who accuse immigrants of, “Taking our jobs away from us.” Still when employers advocate for pay cut, Americans would protest, but immigrants would take the pay cut and work even harder. “What kind of people are these?” Americans would ask.

    Corporate America thrives on the desperation of immigrants who are eager, not only to survive but to provide for members of their extended families in their home countries. Desperate immigrants would do anything (but they will not steal) just to make members of their communities comfortable. They will volunteer to work without being paid over time… cut down their own pay… work as fishermen in Alaska, where they are kept for months without going home to visit their family members… drive trucks…. Where many American workers want to change a work culture they perceive degrading, desperate immigrant workers would not part take at such a change. Why? To some immigrants, whatever they earn in America is better than what they would earn in their home countries where they work but sometimes don’t get paid at all.

    The American dream is a car, a house, a dog and two children. The immigrant dream is several of everything: houses, cars, children and no dog. So many immigrants give birth to many children running all over American neighborhoods to the annoyance of Americans who appreciate quietness, and who secretly ask themselves, “What are immigrants doing with so many children?” Americans are honest people. When the average American finds a lost thing, the culture is to return it, but when some immigrants find something lost, they call it, “An act of fate,” and keep it. Americans are monogamous by judicial, but some immigrant’s have a polygamous culture, and even though married, many encourage their girlfriends to come and see them at work to the horror of Americans. The average American is very trusting and does not keep a secret, but many foreign cultures encourage secrecy, craftiness, and deceit. Some immigrants marry Americans, become legal immigrants, and then disappear without a trace, with some taking their children along with them. Do Americans have reasons to dislike immigrants?

    Americans are taught to tell the truth regardless of relationship, but some foreign cultures have selective truth, to these, parents, blood ties, close friends do not “lie,” so even when it is obvious that a relative is lying, many immigrants ignore the truth. Americans love perfection; they would not buy a defective product, but the average immigrant thinks, “As no one is perfect so is a product.” Therefore immigrants pay dearly for products that Americans would discard. At auction, immigrants would bid the highest even for flooded vehicles, they pay dearly for damaged and expired goods, and again, to the annoyance of Americans. President Donald Trump was an ordinary American who, in his youth, walked the streets, socialized with hooligans, employed both immigrants and Americans alike and worked with international business men and women, and though this might sound strange, President Trump appeared to love immigrants. He married one.

     

  • ‘No one will be safe in Biden’s America’

    ‘No one will be safe in Biden’s America’

    President Donald Trump painted a grim picture of life in the U.S. if his rival, Joe Biden, were to win the November presidential election, promising that there would be insecurity economic decline, and an end to basic rights such as free speech and gun ownership.

    “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said, as he accepted his party’s nomination to run for a second and final term as president on the last night of the Republican National Convention.

    The threat dovetailed with a law-and-order message that seems set to dominate the Republican campaign, as just over two months are left before polling day.

    The speech, which lasted nearly 70 minutes – by far the longest at either party’s convention – included outlandish claims, such as that Trump is the greatest president for African Americans since Abraham Lincoln, who freed slaves.

    Trump, 74, held the speech on the South Lawn of the White House, a controversial move with limited parallel in U.S. history, as generally such conventions are held in arenas away from government property.

    Members of Biden’s Democratic Party have criticised the move.

    Moreover, the pandemic notwithstanding, Trump gathered a crowd of many hundreds who sat closely crowded, mostly without masks, some shaking hands as they greeted one another.

    The president used the speech to hail his own handling of the coronavirus pandemic, insisting he had moved swiftly and saved lives.

    “We will defeat the virus and the pandemic and emerge stronger than ever before,” Trump said, without laying out a specific plan.

    He said a vaccine could be ready before the end of the year.

    Some 180,000 people have died in the country from the coronavirus, the worst absolute number of fatalities in any nation and one of the worst figures on a per capita basis.

    Democrats have long accused Trump of bungling the response to the pandemic.

    While the Republicans promised a positive convention, and often strove to present average citizens who praised the president’s policies on trade, housing and criminal justice, Trump’s speech tapped into darker premonitions.

    “Joe Biden is not a saviour of America’s soul, he is a destroyer of America’s jobs, and, if given the chance, he will be the destroyer of American greatness,” Trump said.

    “Joe Biden’s agenda is ‘made in China.’ My agenda is ‘made in the USA,’” Trump added to cheers from a crowd. Trump promised to pull supply chains from China.

    “We are bringing it home,” he continued.

    Trump drummed up fear of a Biden presidency where guns are confiscated from households, liberal orthodoxies are imposed by force while free speech is stifled, and socialism becomes the dominant economic ideology.

    Biden, who is 77, has spent nearly five decades in the public eye as a moderate, and during the Democratic primary he had to fend off a number of challengers from the left.

    Trump attacked the globalized trade policies of his predecessors, as well as the foreign wars that the country has repeatedly entered, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which the president noted “never end.”

    He pointed to Biden’s vote in the Senate in favour of the Iraq war.

    The president also referenced ongoing unrest over the summer that stemmed from protests against police brutality and racial injustice following the deaths of black citizens at the hands of law enforcement officers.

    Over the past weekend, a black man was shot seven times in the back by police in Wisconsin, leading to fresh outbreaks of social justice demonstrations and some instances of violence on the streets.

    “He’s rooting for more violence, not less,” Biden said of Trump in an interview on broadcaster MSNBC.

    He added, “He’s pouring more gasoline on the fire.”

    Trump has sought to capitalise on the fact that much of the recent unrest has been in cities run by Democrats.

    Biden noted that all the violence is taking place while Trump is president, and questioned how a second term would lead to a different result.

    As on each night of the convention, the president had members of his family speak to praise him.

    On the final night it was his daughter Ivanka, who also works in the White House as an adviser.

    She tried to soften up the public image of her father, describing him as a loving father and grandfather who behind the scenes frets about the U.S. working class and is willing to stand up against Washington’s elite.

    Featured speakers on the final night included public housing beneficiaries, business owners and a widow of former police officer who killed by looters this summer.

    However, many of their stories seemed likely to be drowned out by the president’s lengthy speech and grim imagery.

  • America’s COVID-19 testing insane, worthless – Bill Gates

    America’s COVID-19 testing insane, worthless – Bill Gates

    Microsoft founder, Bill Gates has called America’s testing system for COVID-19 “insanity” and the most worthless, as he doubled down on his critique of the US response to the pandemic.

    Gates stressed that the country was now facing “a pretty dramatic price” both in human death and wasted money.

    Speaking with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Gates said it takes far too long to receive coronavirus test results in the U.S.

    “You can’t get the federal government to improve the testing because they just want to say how great it is,” the Microsoft co-founder-turned-philanthropist said.

    “I’ve said to them, look, have a CDC website that prioritizes who gets tested. That’s trivial to do. They won’t pay attention to that.

    “I’ve said don’t reimburse any tests where the result goes back after three days. You’re paying billions of dollars in this very inequitable way to get the most worthless test results of any country in the world.”

    On America’s lockdowns, Gates pointed to countries in the European Union that faced the coronavirus outbreak earlier than the U.S. and instituted more coordinated lockdowns.

    “What’s impressive is that Italy, France, Spain ― who had a wave before us ― managed as they fell off to keep even the parts of the country that hadn’t had the intense epidemic from creating a second wave,” Gates said.

    ”In the case of the United States, they opened up their bars. They didn’t do much in the way of wearing masks. And so those areas became this second wave,” he added.

    Gates has pledged $1.6 billion to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, with $100 million going towards coronavirus vaccines.

    Most recently, he argued that the CDC’s COVID-19 response was “muzzled” by a White House that refused to offer proper leadership during a time of crisis.

  • American Wonder, Chinese Magic – Chidi Amuta

    Chidi Amuta

    The architecture of a new world order may just be sketching its untidy outlines. Today’s axis of strategic equilibrium is a deformed triangle with two and half sides. The two sides are the United States versus China with a supporting undefined half role for Vladimir Putin’s neo-Tsarist Russia.

    But by far the more consequential axis of a relevant engagement or even possible confrontation is the Washington-Beijing axis.

    The original episodes of sporadic friction between the United States and China over trade could have been passed off as an offshoot of Donald Trump’s bullish economic nationalism.

    But lately, matters have spilled over into the treacherous territory of conflicting claims of national security infringements by both sides. This is where diplomatic showmanship ends and toying with unintended strategic accidents begins.

    Perhaps it is fortuitous that less than 100 days to the US presidential election, relations between the two major contending global powers is assuming a more gritty texture. From frequent squabbles over trade and tariffs, the rhetoric of rivalry has included conspiracy theories over the origins and itinerary of the corona virus as well as the politics and international economic implications of its spread. Only last week, the unease degenerated into reciprocal diplomatic bad behavior and even outright nastiness.

    The US shut down the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas and sent the diplomats there packing home. In a toned down disproportionate reciprocity, the Chinese closed the US Consulate in the south western city of Chengdu. Given the very temperamental disposition of today’s White House, the possibility that there will be more drama in relations in the days ahead can be expected.

    The ramping up of tension between Washington and Beijing falls squarely into the predictable diplomatic habit of the United States. American foreign policy and domestic politics always need an external adversary to animate them and conveniently divert attention from serious worries at home. When there is no enemy in the horizon, Washington creates or simulates one. It is a rare stretch in American history when there is no adversary. It could be Chile under Salvador Allende or Libya under Muamar Ghaddafi. It could even be Manuel Noriega’s Panama or Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela.

     

    The real underlying unease of the current situation is the possibility that for the first time in history, the outcome in two consecutive US presidential elections could be determined not by the power of American voters but possibly by the machinations and meddling of contending powers, namely, Russia (in 2016) and perhaps China (in 2020). Unlike in the Cold War years when Soviet subversion of US power took the shape of direct arms competition and ideological disinformation, the target today is the bedrock of America’s global credibility: its democratic foundation as embodied in the electoral process whose highest point is the election of the US president. The new instrument of choice is ironically information technology and cyber espionage, an area where the US ought to be the undisputed global leader.

     

    However, unease about the possibility of Chinese meddling in the forthcoming US presidential elections may be far fetched and could miss the point. It does not capture the entirety of what is at stake between Beijing and Washington. In many ways, Mr. Trump has merely put the inevitable confrontation with China on fast forward. Whether we like it or not, a face-off between the two powers remains permanently inevitable. The only way that the US can maintain its present hegemony is by sabotaging China’s economy or distracting China diplomatically just to frustrate or delay China’s imminent prevalence.

     

    Correspondingly, China’s road to global pre-eminence can only lead through rapid economic ascendancy and constantly feeding off America’s known vulnerabilities, namely, its appetite for credit driven consumerism and new found incremental retraction from the global stage. In every sense, then, both powers are feeding off each other’s present vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

     

    The United States is busy with a public health pandemic with equally apocalyptic economic consequences. It has had added to its plate a far reaching social and historical civil unrest. Fired by Trumpian divisiveness, America’s long standing and systemic anti black racism has returned to haunt it. All these are happening hot in an election year in which America’s first populist demagogue and elected autocrat is seeking re-election. Modern democracy has never faced a more grave existential test and threat in its best exhibition place.

     

    For China, this may indeed be the season of the ‘good cat’. As the late Deng Xiaoping, author of China’s liberalization and opening up once remarked: ‘It doesn’t matter if it is a white cat or a black cat. As long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.” Therefore, while the United States is busy with its major existential complications, China has literally gobbled the hitherto autonomous province of Hong Kong after 22 years of semi autonomy and relative freedom.

     

    A draconian national security legislation has been drafted overnight and decreed into effect from behind closed doors to make Hong Kong a legal part of mainland China’s communist dictatorship. A new regime of restrictive laws against free speech and assembly have been pushed into effect, making misdemeanors like riding a motor bike with signs that demand freedom for Hong Kong residents violations of national security. Those who breach the new legislation are likely to be repatriated to mainland China to be tried and viciously punished.

     

    In similar vein, Chinese troops have exchanged fire with Indian troops at their common border for the first time, ending 42 years of uneasy peace and diplomatic skirmishes on a testy border relationship. While America is busy, China has once again been flexing its military muscle in the South China Sea and frightening its Asian neighbours in what is clearly a neighbourhood scaremongering exercise. Similarly, Chinese authorities have tightened their repressive tactics around the ethnic Yuguirs whose freedoms are being curtailed through a less than transparent forced encampment policy. Clearly, China has defined its sphere of influence and signaled its global aspirations. It has the money, the demographic gravity and apparently a clearly defined foreign policy strategy to step into the yawning gap being created by America’s newfound isolationism and retreat into bullish nationalism.

     

    Prior to the current quagmire of health and economic pandemics in the United States, Donald Trump had embarked on a programme of serial dismantling of the post -World War II global order and its architecture of multilateralism and global co-operation on major challenges. He had taken the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, the World Trade Organisation and very lately the World Health Organisation. He had similarly thrashed the Iran Nuclear agreement as well as major trade agreements. Even in the midst of the pandemic, he is threatening to reduce or totally withdraw US troops stationed in Germany and parts of Europe since the end of the Second World War.

     

    Similarly, US support for NATO has been reduced to a transactional equation in which some book keepers at NATO headquarters tally the contributions of individual nations and decide on who is falling short on contributions. No one can say how this will affect Article 5 in the event of an armed attack on any NATO member. In the process, the original trans-Atlantic alliance on which the security of Europe and the West has been hinged for the past 75 years has been exposed to the idiosyncracies of individual national leaders.

     

    It is shocking that in dismantling the subsisting liberal international order, it did not occur to Mr. Trump and his inchoate ideological handlers in the White House that other ambitious aspirants to global power pre-eminence would be waiting to fill the vacuum thus created. It is an elementary law of big power supremacy politics that no hegemonic power voluntarily goes into self remission. Secondly, when a pre-eminent power declines as a result of its own internal contradictions, it leaves a vacuum which is quickly filled by other rival powers.

     

    China ,which is the supreme contender for global pre-eminence to the United States, has seen in America’s present challenges a further opportunity to push its advantages and accelerate its advancement. Prior to the current covid-19 and other convulsions in the United States, China would appear to have designed a policy that steps in wherever America misses its steps. Chinese official support for Huawei, the leading manufacturer of 5G equipment, has continued to unsettle the United States. Even as recently as the United States decision to pull out of the World Health Organisation, China was on hand to fill the vacuum. Total US annual financial commitment ot the WHO is estimated at about 1 billion dollars. Bill Gates alone supports WHO with $500 million annually. The Chinese have stepped in with a pledge o f $2 billion in support for the WHO over another 2 years, thereby cushioning the effect of the US withdrawal. The rest is history.

     

    The jury is still out on whether the onset of the corona virus pandemic in China was an accident, a natural development or an act of programmed biotechnology warfare designed to advance China’s economic advantages. While the corona pandemic is still raging everywhere else, China has largely got the virus under control except for occasional negligible outbreaks here and there. In the meantime, it has secured tremendous economic advantages as the leading global manufacturers and exporter of testing kits, respirators, ventilators, medical protection gear, reagents, therapeutic drugs and possibly a vaccine.

     

    The confrontation between Washington and Beijing has more far reaching implications and meanings. Clearly, the authoritarian communists have proved more efficient managers of the Covid-19 emergency irrespective of where the virus originated from. It would appear that the regime of stiff controls enabled the Chinese to quickly lock down and isolate affected provinces. They deployed an army of contact tracers and most significantly, deployed their new found technological advantage in developing apps that use the footprints of individual cell phones to trace persons who may have been infected or who have visited locations of likely infections. They erected hospitals overnight, mass produced personal protection equipment, deployed a combination of western and Chinese therapeutics and generally regimented the virus into remission and retreat in the shortest possible time.

     

    What is more remarkable is that the Chinese have been able to convert the adversity of this pandemic into an economic advantage. As first movers in the technology of testing, protection gear and basic therapeutic products, the Chinese have received the largest orders from governments around the world for covid related imports. At the height of the covid crisis in Europe, the Swiss government ordered supplies worth $500 million from China. Similarly, Jack Mar, the Chinese founder of Alibaba ordered in excess of 2 million sets of personal protection gear and ventilators from Chinese firms for shipment as gifts to different African countries in aid of their Covid-19 emergency efforts.

     

    As it were, then, both China’s authoritarian political system and state dominated capitalism would seem to have fared much better than western democracy and private equity dominated capitalism especially in the United States in dealing with this virus. No amount of propaganda can disguise this fact especially with the continued bungling of the corona virus challenge by the United States administration.

     

    The Covid-19 emergency may have provided an opportunity to place the confrontation between China and the United States in bold ideological relief. But it does not of course exhaust the strategic contests at play. Prior to the Covid-19 challenge, the Chinese penetration of the global landscape had been systematic and apparently programmed. China has provided infrastructure loans to African countries at concessionary rates. These loans have often come with Chinese expertise and loads of manpower. Chinese lenders have avoided the usual conditionalities that imprisoned African economies in debts that were difficult to service or pay. In many cases, the Chinese have steered clear of meddling in the internal affairs of countries where they do business except in selling arms to the side that must, in their estimation, win in a conflict situation.

    For us in Nigeria, the frost between Beijing and Washington has only tangential diplomatic implications but vastly consequential economic import. With massive Chinese infrastructure loans to fund our rail and airport modernization programmes, Nigeria will become increasingly tethered to the global economic stranglehold of an ambitious China. We already owe China an estimated $80 billion in various categories of loans and concession arrangements. Already, China’s competitive advantages have made it the most attractive destination for Nigeria’s small to medium scale business travellers and new contracts.

    Even after Donald Trump, it is unlikely that the United States will ever regain a priority of place as either a source of international finance outside the Bretton Woods circuit or of direct bilateral assistance. Its position as a strategic ally will last for the remaining short tenure of fossil fuels as a global energy source. Clearly then, the future of our national interest is best served by the prospects of an expanding China than a retreating United States. It is a choice between two hegemonies, one declining and the other ascendant.

    Barring an accident of tragic bad judgment by either side between now and November, relations between China and the United States will survive the US presidential election. This assurance derives from the sheer quantum of money at stake in that relationship. Curiously, China’s long term interest is better served by a Donald Trump continuation in the White House. The more America pulls back from the world, through isolationism and nationalism, the more space there is for China to fill the abandoned space.

    The reversal of the nationalist trend by a Democrat victory will restore some of the threatened global liberal order, bring back some of America’s global involvements and thus stall China’s expansionist roller coaster ride. For China, then, Donald Trump may be a short term economic irritation but he is a long term strategic asset. For the United States, on the other hand, China may provide immediate campaign season distraction in a season of domestic catastrophe but still remains a formidable economic partner.

    The present drama between the two super powers is only a dance of competing jealous lovers on the world stage. The real strategic engagement lies several decades ahead, when China is fully ready both diplomatically and militarily.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • America’s response to COVID-19 pandemic embarrassing – Bill Gates

    The U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic is “embarrassing” compared to other countries, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in an interview with CNN.

    He added that the outlook was “more bleak” than he would have expected.

    The U.S. has recorded in the last two days close to 90,000 cases of the virus to have a cumulative total of 2,593,477 cases.

    The death toll is now 128,132.

    America is matched only by Brazil in the grim statistics: about 80,000 cases in 48 hours, a cumulative total of 1,313,667 cases and death toll 57,070.

    The philanthropist and founder of Microsoft five years ago predicted that a virus would develop into a pandemic in a TED talk.

    In response to the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, Gates has said his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was giving “total attention” to funding efforts to defeat the pandemic.

    However, Gates criticised the response of his native country, calling out the lack of tracing and the weakness of regulations in the US.

    “Because our behaviour and contact tracing isn’t working well we continue to have very large case spread, and it is embarrassing versus say Europe or other countries,” Gates said during his interview with CNN.

    Throughout the interview, Gates highlighted that the tepid response in the US to measures aimed to combat the coronavirus, such as mask-wearing, is one reason why the country has the most number of cases in the world.

    “The United States has had a tough time. We are not as tough on contact tracing or enforcing quarantine and compliance with mask-wearing is far less than particularly the countries in Asia,” he said.

    “The global picture and the US picture are both bleaker than I would have expected,” he added.

    Even though rates of infection have fallen in some parts of the world, Gates warned that part of this success is likely due to the effect that hotter temperature is having on the virus.

    He urged health authorities and citizens to remain vigilant.

    “The health experts and others like myself are saying, ‘Hey let’s not lose sight of this, even though the weather is helping us a bit’ … We know now we are benefiting from the summer and so force of infection will get worse in the fall,” he said.

    Companies and health authorities including the Gates Foundation around the world are currently in a global race to develop a vaccine.

  • Ronaldo told me he’ll probably end up in America – Nani

    Cristiano Ronaldo told Nani that he “will probably end up in America” at some point of his career, the Orlando City winger has claimed.

    The pair have been team-mates at club and international level, having shared the flanks at Manchester United and for Portugal.

    Ronaldo has been tipped to follow in the footsteps of the likes of David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thierry Henry and David Villa in winding down his career in MLS and, now 35, that day may well be approaching.

    “A couple of years ago, he told me that he will probably end up in America,” Nani told ESPN.

    “It’s not 100 per cent, but probably. There is a chance.”

  • Donald Trump vows not to watch U.S. soccer

    Donald Trump vows not to watch U.S. soccer

    Donald Trump has taken a shot at U.S. Soccer, claiming he won’t be watching the game anymore following a decision not to force players to stand for the national anthem.

    America has been rocked by protests after the death of George Floyd with footballers around the world adding their voices to the Black Lives Matter movement.

    U.S. Soccer themselves have taken a surprisingly strong stance and announced earlier this week that players would no longer be forced to stand for the national anthem.

    Trump has now slammed that decision, however, vowing he won’t be watching the game again until the move is reversed.

    “I won’t be watching much anymore! And it looks like the NFL is heading in that direction also, but not with me watching!” Trump said on Twitter.

  • America is too big to fall, but can implode, By Owei Lakemfa

    By Owei Lakemfa.

    African American, George Floyd was until Africa Day, May 25, known only to a handful of people; mainly his family, friends, co-workers and neigbours. But his lone murder so shook the world, that it displaced news of the Coronavirus which has infected over seven million people and claimed more than 400,000 lives.

    In death, Floyd became so famous that when he was buried fifteen days later, most major channels in the world gave it live coverage, world leaders including Pope Francis, and millions across the world, paid tribute. Despite the body language of the American President, millions of Americans including military and security chiefs joined in the tributes. Public staff, from policemen to American embassy staff including in Nigeria, took a kneel as a mark of respect for a man whose painful, tearful murder, threatens to reset his country’s race relations and justice system.

    Taking the kneel is also a regret and apology for his murder by men paid from public funds to protect lives and property, and a vow that all will be done to ensure that such foul murder will no longer be tolerated or protected by their country.

    Many African Americans are murdered annually by the police just as the Ku Klux Khan for hundreds of years burnt, battered, strangled, lynched and murdered Blacks, but so powerful was the force of George Floyd’s death that millions see it as America’s opportunity to cleanse itself of centuries of racial genocide and injustice.

    The American establishment has knelt on the necks of African Americans for 401 years now; two and half centuries holding them as slaves and the last century and half trying to convince itself that African Americans are human beings deserving of fundamental rights like the right to life, and full American citizenship. America over the past four centuries seemed to have gotten away with these crimes; but it took a White policeman kneeling on the neck of Blackman George Floyd for about nine minutes for it to recognise that there can be payback time. The desperate attempt of President Donald Trump to turn out the military against protesters, attempts to sabotage the protests and even produce a false autopsy report, merely added fuel to the protests.

    The protest movement is so massive, and the waves for reform, so strong that no pro-establishment African American or self-respecting White has dared swim against it. The tsunami the Floyd murder has triggered, may eventually sweep away the Trump Presidency.

    Certainly, America as the biggest economy in the world – with a $22 trillion economy size – and the strongest military including its control of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the unipolar military alliance, is too strong to fall. However its Achilles heel is that it was a colony built mainly on the genocide of the indigenous Indian people and the slavery of the imported Black people. Despite having failed to transform its race relations, it is unlikely that that it is the indigenous Indians or other brown people that will bring it down. That is likely to be the historic duty of the enslaved Black people like the abolitionist lineage of Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman, the grandchildren of the intellectuals like W.E.B. Dubois, Richard Wright and Langston Huges, the inheritors of dove-like Martin Luther King Jnr, the fire-spitting Malcolm X and John Brown who despite being a Whiteman, in a Christ-like manner, laid down his life for the emancipation of the Black slave.

    So, despite being as heavy as lead, America is as light as a feather; it is like a solid rock by the seaside which the toothless waves eat up. It should have listened to Marcus Garvey in 1919 when he campaigned for racial equality and justice. America should have reflected in 1963 when during the ‘March on Washington’ Martin Luther King Jnr warned that: “Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood… There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. …We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”

    The United States should have heard the “I can’t breathe” cries of Eric Garner in 2014 or correctly read the message of Colin Kaepernick who two years later, took a kneel to protest police brutality and racial injustice in ‘God’s own country.’

    But America has become like the falcon which cannot hear the falconer. This is typified by the actions of President Trump who seemed so irritated and insulted by the protests that he threatened to turn out the military to clear protesters from the streets.

    Did the American establishment listen to one of Garvey’s children in Jamaica, Bob Marley when in his “Babylon system” he obliquely referred to the United States as “the vampire, falling empire” which is: “Suckin’ the blood of the sufferers” ?

    I do not think the momentum the protests has unleashed can stop America from returning to its old ways of racial bigotry and naked exploitation, or compel it to radically reform its internal security system especially its police force. A country built on exploitation and run on an unjust system, necessarily needs a brutal police force to maintain its old ‘law and order’ falsehood.

    No, I do not think the American system is about being brought to its knees. But the protest movement is like the seemingly harmless Muhammed Ali punches that rocked his opponents, and a combination of such punches that brought the mighty down to the canvas.

    The American empire like the Roman Empire which existed for two thousand years, will not last forever. Again like ancient Rome, the slaves and former slaves will play a major role in its decline. Like the British Empire that ruled the waves and in its glory invaded several countries, its sun will set.

    America is too big to collapse and in any case, were it to do so, it will fall on many countries, crushing them under its weight. Rather, I see it implode, and some of the internal contradictions that will aid that cave in, including its inhuman treatment of the African American people, are already in place.

  • Trump’s America, it’s a terrible beauty!, By CHIDO NWANGWU

    Trump’s America, it’s a terrible beauty!, By CHIDO NWANGWU

    By CHIDO NWANGWU
    His bombshell was launched on Wednesday June 3, 2020, regarding the Trump White House insensitive, divisive and unworthy handling of the brutal, installment murder of another non-confrontational Black man, George Floyd : “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us…. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
    James Norman Mattis is a distinguished embodiment of America’s highest dedication to its armed forces. He put in 44 years in the Marine Corps and retired as a USMC General. The man whose combination of sheer, unflappable courage and intelligence earned him the triple nicknames of “The Warrior”, “Mad Dog” and “Monk”, came from retirement to serve as the 26th US Secretary of Defense from January 2017 to January 2019. He kept his frustrations with President Donald Trump away from any public drama, leaks or spats.
    Yes; the United States of America is the proverbial land of milk and honey! It is the land of magic and creative geniuses. Apple, Google., Microsoft, Tesla, and Amazon.
    Its wealthy citizens have remained the most philanthropic group of people in the history of mankind.
    In assessing its known armada and constellation of military might, quantum of its formidable technological innovations and vast economic resources, I believe that the United States is the world’s only hyper-power, that is, Super power plus.
    Practically, it is the world’s most diverse, most creative and competitive market. Regardless of your adversity, ethnicity, race, religion, gender or orientation, it offers immigrants endless opportunities; almost.
    Yes; almost. Almost, because the existential realties of America’s “original sin” of slavery in the 17th century are seen, oppressively, in police brutality, financial red-lining and assorted but subtle institutionalization of racism. Almost, because the coarse apostles of the swine gospel of White supremacy and the inheritors of the fruits of the inhumane labor and brutal exploitation and bloody sacrifices made by the enslaved Africans in America, are still demanding all the advantages taken by their slave-owning families!
    Alongside the neo-Nazis and other anti-Semitic and anti-blacks gangs, they represent those Trump called “good people on both sides….”
    Mr. Trump probably believes that the 4 policeman who conspired until their chocking to death of Mr. Floyd count among his “good people.”
    Like Floyd’s issue, Trump’s provocative and threatening tweets and comments on related and recent of these events on race, racism, the police casual killing of mainly African American boys reveal the character of our president.
    Which, necessarily, leads to the critical question: how deeply
    do black lives matter to Mr. Trump?
    Thankfully, beyond Trump’s giddy attitude, for all of its material successes, America’s real strength rests on the prudent balance of the constitutional assignment of roles and the moral clarity to execute your obligations with a certain sense of fairness and decency. All, elements of character.
    In fact, one of the greatest Presidents of these United States, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), underscored it with these timeless words: “Americanism is a question of principle, of purpose, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of descent.”
    Somehow, someway and somewhere, Trump seems captivated by the arrogations of an imperial presidency. That is, King Donald of America.
    I must say, that the 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump is more in the grips of the seduction and apparati of power, . These past almost 40 months of the Trump presidency continue to reveal the man and his leadership character.
    On this critical issue of character, here’s another insightful angle from a woman who has worked in the White House in the 1980s:
    “In a president, character is everything. A president doesn’t have to be brilliant… He doesn’t have to be clever; you can hire clever… You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you can’t buy courage and decency, you can’t rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him…”, are the very canonical points of the former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and a Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy Noonan.
    Peggy wrote those decades before the never-before-seen squad of racially-divisive men and women and President took over, completely, the Republican Party, the White House and the so-called Christian Right.
    And, what I see, like Mattis and millions of others, is a terrible beauty!
    *Dr. Chido Nwangwu who appears as an analyst on CNN and SKYnews serves as Founder & Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. He is the author of the November 2020 book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity. @Chidö247